Donald Trump is set to intensify a yearslong crusade to reshape higher education, from how students act on campus to what is taught in classrooms.
Colleges and universities have been feeling the heat for years, facing scrutiny on all sides. That scrutiny escalated earlier this year after protests over the Israel-Hamas war disrupted instruction on dozens of college campuses nationwide, bringing free speech and antisemitism issues front and center.
Michael Brickman, the education policy director for the conservative think tank Cicero Institute, expects a more active civil rights office in Trump’s education department, due in large part to those demonstrations.
“We’ve been talking about accountability in terms of, like, do your students get jobs? But there’s also accountability in the sense that the department has a civil rights office, and that office is tasked with ensuring that students’ rights are protected. And I think you’ll be likely to see a more active office than there has been in the past,” he said.
Republicans in Congress have called for the Department of Education to be more active in enforcing the Civil Rights Act.
“We see on these college campuses a major problem with antisemitism. And frankly, the Department of Education has failed to do its job in enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Rep. Mike Lawler told NOTUS, referencing findings of harassment of Jewish students during college campus demonstrations.
Lawler introduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when enforcing federal antidiscrimination laws; 320 representatives voted in favor of the bill.
Trump outlined his own broad vision for higher education in his Agenda 47 campaign platform. He’s proposed taxing, fining or suing university endowments for engaging in racial discrimination (conservatives have long associated DEI and CRT with racial discrimination) and using the money to fund the creation of a free online-learning institution, The American Academy.
Dozens of DEI offices and initiatives have shut down in response to state legislatures targeting their efforts.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said that institutions are already gaming out how to navigate Trump 2.0, with respect to both his stated plans for higher education and other policies that will impact colleges and universities implicitly. That includes planning for what could be Trump’s most sweeping early initiative: wide-scale deportations.
“His threats to get rid of students if they engage in protests — so, to deport them if they’re engaging in student protests, which is, of course, a First Amendment right in America — have led presidents to say, ‘We’re going to do whatever we can to protect immigrant students, DACA students, international students, because the strength of our institutions is dependent upon diversity of our faculty, students and staff,’” she said.
Linda McMahon will be tasked with executing Trump’s agenda if she’s confirmed as education secretary. The wealthy Trump ally is something of an unknown in the field: McMahon served for just over a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education over a decade ago. She has no classroom experience and is most well-known for being a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment.
The pick raised eyebrows, but some think she’s exactly what’s needed.
“I’m not excited about anyone who’s been experienced with the past education processes, because it’s not working,” said Rep. Burgess Owens, who wants to be the next House Education Committee chair. “We need new thought, innovation, and she has a history of whatever she gets involved with, she finds a way to make it happen.”
Little is known about McMahon’s views on education, beyond hallmark issues like school choice, where Republicans will be counting on her action.
She chairs the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump conservative think tank, though it’s unclear how much or a role she had in developing the institute’s policy platform. AFPI has advocated for rooting DEI out of college campuses and echoed calls from Congress members to combat foreign influence on college campuses.
Politico reported that the organization is developing a lot of what Trump will aim to do.
At the root of many of the changes Republicans want to see is skepticism about higher education in general — both in terms of its necessity and effectiveness. As the cost of college rises, Americans increasingly believe that a college degree is overvalued.
Multiple states have removed degree requirements from state jobs — something AFPI has advocated for.
In a second Trump administration, that skepticism could give way to more emphasis on educational programs that have proven student outcomes, similar to a 2023 law in Texas that allots funding to community college programs based on outcomes instead of enrollment.
“We have a model bill that’s loosely based on what they’ve done in Texas. The broad idea being: reward colleges and universities based on their outcomes,” Brickman said. “Are they getting good jobs, or are they ending up in default? Are they just kind of dropping out or staying in school until they just kind of don’t know what to do with themselves anymore?”
On the flip side, there are concerns that such skepticism will lead to reduced investment overall in the nation’s colleges and universities. In a 2021 interview with Breitbart News, Vice President-elect JD Vance lambasted the American higher education system, saying that it needed to be destroyed.
“It’s like we’ve created this trail that people have to run through, and that trail makes them worse people instead of better people,” he said at the time. “I actually think that we have to destroy the universities in this country. They get too much money, they have too much power, and I don’t think they do anything good.”
Pasquerella worries the end result will be fewer people having access to higher education opportunities.
“There’s skepticism around the value of a college degree, and they’re reinforcing this by … saying that higher education is the enemy and that is somehow un-American. It will hurt those who are not beneficiaries of higher education that these leaders have been able to receive, but those who have been most underserved and most marginalized by our economic systems,” she said.
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.